FTR #996 Civilization’s Twilight: Update on Technocratic Fascism

Updat­ing our ongo­ing analy­sis of what Mr. Emory calls “tech­no­crat­ic fas­cism,” we exam­ine how exist­ing tech­nolo­gies are neu­tral­iz­ing and/or ren­der­ing obso­lete foun­da­tion­al ele­ments of our civ­i­liza­tion and demo­c­ra­t­ic gov­ern­men­tal sys­tems.

We begin our descrip­tion by ref­er­enc­ing a vital­ly impor­tant arti­cle by David Golum­bia. ” . . . . Such tech­no­cratic beliefs are wide­spread in our world today, espe­cially in the enclaves of dig­i­tal enthu­si­asts, whether or not they are part of the giant cor­po­rate-dig­i­tal leviathan. Hack­ers (‘civic,’ ‘eth­i­cal,’ ‘white’ and ‘black’ hat alike), hack­tivists, Wik­iLeaks fans [and Julian Assange et al–D. E.], Anony­mous ‘mem­bers,’ even Edward Snow­den him­self walk hand-in-hand with Face­book and Google in telling us that coders don’t just have good things to con­tribute to the polit­i­cal world, but that the polit­i­cal world is theirs to do with what they want, and the rest of us should stay out of it: the polit­i­cal world is bro­ken, they appear to think (right­ly, at least in part), and the solu­tion to that, they think (wrong­ly, at least for the most part), is for pro­gram­mers to take polit­i­cal mat­ters into their own hands. . . . [Tor co-cre­ator] Din­gle­dine  asserts that a small group of soft­ware devel­op­ers can assign to them­selves that role, and that mem­bers of demo­c­ra­tic poli­ties have no choice but to accept them hav­ing that role. . . .”

Begin­ning with a chill­ing opin­ion piece in “The New York Times,” we note that tech­no­log­i­cal devel­op­ment threat­ens to super-charge the Big Lies that dri­ve our world. As any­one who saw the file Star Wars film “Rogue One” knows, the tech­nol­o­gy required to cre­ate a near­ly life-like com­put­er-gen­er­at­ed videos of a real per­son is already a real­i­ty. Once the province of movie stu­dios and oth­er firms with mil­lions to spend, the tech­nol­o­gy is now avail­able for down­load for free.

” . . . . In 2016 Gareth Edwards, the direc­tor of the Star Wars film ‘Rogue One,’ was able to cre­ate a scene fea­tur­ing a young Princess Leia by manip­u­lat­ing images of Car­rie Fish­er as she looked in 1977. Mr. Edwards had the best hard­ware and soft­ware a $200 mil­lion Hol­ly­wood bud­get could buy. Less than two years lat­er, images of sim­i­lar qual­i­ty can be cre­at­ed with soft­ware avail­able for free down­load on Red­dit. That was how a faked video sup­pos­ed­ly of the actress Emma Wat­son in a show­er with anoth­er woman end­ed up on the web­site Celeb Jihad. . . .”

The tech­nol­o­gy has already ren­dered obso­lete selec­tive edit­ing such as that per­formed by James O’Keefe: ” . . . . as the nov­el­ist William Gib­son once said, ‘The street finds its own uses for things.’ So do rogue polit­i­cal actors. The impli­ca­tions for democ­ra­cy are eye-open­ing. The con­ser­v­a­tive polit­i­cal activist James O’Keefe has cre­at­ed a cot­tage indus­try manip­u­lat­ing polit­i­cal per­cep­tions by edit­ing footage in mis­lead­ing ways. In 2018, low-tech edit­ing like Mr. O’Keefe’s is already an anachro­nism: Imag­ine what even less scrupu­lous activists could do with the pow­er to cre­ate ‘video’ fram­ing real peo­ple for things they’ve nev­er actu­al­ly done. One har­row­ing poten­tial even­tu­al­i­ty: Fake video and audio may become so con­vinc­ing that it can’t be dis­tin­guished from real record­ings, ren­der­ing audio and video evi­dence inad­mis­si­ble in court. . . .”

After high­light­ing a sto­ry about AI-gen­er­at­ed “deep­fake” pornog­ra­phy with peo­ple’s faces super­im­posed on oth­ers’ bod­ies in porno­graph­ic lay­outs, we note how robots have altered our polit­i­cal and com­mer­cial land­scapes, through cyber tech­nol­o­gy: ” . . . . Robots are get­ting bet­ter, every day, at imper­son­at­ing humans. When direct­ed by oppor­tunists, male­fac­tors and some­times even nation-states, they pose a par­tic­u­lar threat to demo­c­ra­t­ic soci­eties, which are premised on being open to the peo­ple. Robots pos­ing as peo­ple have become a men­ace. . . . In com­ing years, cam­paign finance lim­its will be (and maybe already are) evad­ed by robot armies pos­ing as ‘small’ donors. And actu­al vot­ing is anoth­er obvi­ous tar­get — per­haps the ulti­mate tar­get. . . .”

Before the actu­al replace­ment of man­u­al labor by robots, devices to tech­no­crat­i­cal­ly “improve”–read “coer­cive­ly engi­neer” work­ers are patent­ed by Ama­zon and have been used on work­ers in some of their facil­i­ties. ” . . . . What if your employ­er made you wear a wrist­band that tracked your every move, and that even nudged you via vibra­tions when it judged that you were doing some­thing wrong? What if your super­vi­sor could iden­ti­fy every time you paused to scratch or fid­get, and for how long you took a bath­room break? What may sound like dystopi­an fic­tion could become a real­i­ty for Ama­zon ware­house work­ers around the world. The com­pa­ny has won two patents for such a wrist­band. . . .”

For some U.K Ama­zon ware­house work­ers, the future is now: ” . . . . Max Craw­ford, a for­mer Ama­zon ware­house work­er in Britain, said in a phone inter­view, ‘After a year work­ing on the floor, I felt like I had become a ver­sion of the robots I was work­ing with.’ He described hav­ing to process hun­dreds of items in an hour — a pace so extreme that one day, he said, he fell over from dizzi­ness. ‘There was no time to go to the loo,’ he said, using the British slang for toi­let. ‘You had to process the items in sec­onds and then move on. If you didn’t meet tar­gets, you were fired.’

“He worked back and forth at two Ama­zon ware­hous­es for more than two years and then quit in 2015 because of health con­cerns, he said: ‘I got burned out.’ Mr. Craw­ford agreed that the wrist­bands might save some time and labor, but he said the track­ing was ‘stalk­er­ish’ and feared that work­ers might be unfair­ly scru­ti­nized if their hands were found to be ‘in the wrong place at the wrong time.’ ‘They want to turn peo­ple into machines,’ he said. ‘The robot­ic tech­nol­o­gy isn’t up to scratch yet, so until it is, they will use human robots.’ . . . .”

Some tech work­ers, well placed at R & D pace­set­ters and giants such as Face­book and Google have done an about-face on the  impact of their ear­li­er efforts and are now strug­gling against the mis­use of the tech­nolo­gies they helped to launch:

” . . . . A group of Sil­i­con Val­ley tech­nol­o­gists who were ear­ly employ­ees at Face­book and Google, alarmed over the ill effects of social net­works and smart­phones, are band­ing togeth­er to chal­lenge the com­pa­nies they helped build. . . . ‘The largest super­com­put­ers in the world are inside of two com­pa­nies — Google and Face­book — and where are we point­ing them?’ Mr. [Tris­tan] Har­ris said. ‘We’re point­ing them at people’s brains, at chil­dren.’ . . . . Mr. [RogerM­c­Namee] said he had joined the Cen­ter for Humane Tech­nol­o­gy because he was hor­ri­fied by what he had helped enable as an ear­ly Face­book investor. ‘Face­book appeals to your lizard brain — pri­mar­i­ly fear and anger,’ he said. ‘And with smart­phones, they’ve got you for every wak­ing moment.’ . . . .”

Tran­si­tion­ing to our next program–updating AI (arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence) tech­nol­o­gy as it applies to tech­no­crat­ic fascism–we note that AI machines are being designed to devel­op oth­er AI’s–“The Rise of the Machine.” ” . . . . Jeff Dean, one of Google’s lead­ing engi­neers, spot­light­ed a Google project called AutoML. ML is short for machine learn­ing, refer­ring to com­put­er algo­rithms that can learn to per­form par­tic­u­lar tasks on their own by ana­lyz­ing data. AutoML, in turn, is a machine learn­ing algo­rithm that learns to build oth­er machine-learn­ing algo­rithms. With it, Google may soon find a way to cre­ate A.I. tech­nol­o­gy that can part­ly take the humans out of build­ing the A.I. sys­tems that many believe are the future of the tech­nol­o­gy indus­try. . . .”

Peter Thiel’s Political/Philosophical Influences: ” . . . Carl Schmitt . . . a Nazi and the Third Reich’s Preeminent Legal Theorist. . . ”

Trump may be appoint­ing Peter Thiel as head of his Pres­i­den­t’s Intel­li­gence Advi­so­ry Board. Thiel is heav­i­ly influ­enced by Carl Schmitt, (on the right in the pho­to­graph) “. . . . a Nazi and the Third Reich’s pre­em­i­nent legal the­o­rist. For Thiel, Schmitt is an inspir­ing throw­back to a pre-Enlight­en­ment age, who exalts strug­gle and insists that the dis­cov­ery of ene­mies is the foun­da­tion of pol­i­tics. . .” We have been warn­ing about Thiel since July of 2010. All of the con­tents of this web­site as of 12/19/2014–Dave Emory’s 37+ years of research and broadcasting–as well as hours of video­taped lec­tures are avail­able on a 32GB flash dri­ve. Dave offers his pro­grams and arti­cles for free–your sup­port is very much appre­ci­at­ed.

Nazis Cash in With Bitcoin

After encoun­ter­ing prob­lems advanc­ing more con­ven­tion­al fund-rais­ing meth­ods, Nazi groups are pros­per­ing due to suc­cess­ful min­ing of Bit­coin. The most suc­cess­ful Nazi min­er of Bit­coin is Andrew “Weev” Aueren­heimer: ” . . . . One neo-Nazi stands above the rest in his bit­coin usage: Andrew ‘weev’ Auern­heimer, who’s received over $1 mil­lion in bit­coin, accord­ing to one report. Even though Auern­heimer has with­drawn rough­ly $118,620 from his bit­coin wal­let between late August and Wednes­day, his remain­ing bit­coin store has been replen­ish­ing his wealth through­out the recent bit­coin boom. . . .” It is not sur­pris­ing that Bit­coin should become a source of Nazi wealth, since its foun­da­tions are as far to the right as can be.

FTR #984 Fascism: 2017 European Tour

We begin our tour by exam­in­ing overt­ly fas­cist ele­ments in the gov­ern­ing Bul­gar­i­an coali­tion of Boyko Borisov, evoca­tive of Bul­gar­i­a’s past as an ally of Nazi Ger­many in World War II. ” . . . May 17, Pavel Tenev, Min­is­ter of Region­al Devel­op­ment, at the time, was forced to resign, after pub­li­ca­tion of a pho­to, show­ing him with his right arm extend­ed in a Nazi salute, stand­ing in front of a wax fig­ure of a Nazi offi­cer in Paris’ Musée Grévin. May 19, anoth­er pho­to was pub­lished on the inter­net, show­ing the fresh­ly appoint­ed depart­ment direc­tor in the Min­istry of Defense, Ivo Antonov, also giv­ing the Nazi salute in front of a Sec­ond World War tank of the Wehrma­cht. . . .”

Oth­er coali­tion part­ners have made dis­parag­ing remarks about Roma (“gyp­sies”) and Jews. Worth not­ing that Borisov’s selec­tion of coali­tion part­ners: ” . . . .Fol­low­ing the recent March 26, par­lia­men­tary elec­tions, Borisov, the win­ner of the elec­tions (his GERB with 32.7 per­cent), did not begin nego­ti­a­tions for a gov­ern­ment coali­tion with the Bul­gar­i­an Social­ist Par­ty (27.2 per­cent) or with the Move­ment for Rights and Free­doms (9 per­cent) rep­re­sent­ing the Turk­ish-speak­ing minor­i­ty, but rather with the Unit­ed Patri­ots (9.1 per­cent). The Unit­ed Patri­ots is an alliance of three extreme right-wing par­ties. . . .”

In recent weeks, the strug­gle over the poten­tial seces­sion of Cat­alo­nia from Spain has gar­nered con­sid­er­able atten­tion

That strug­gle is framed against a larg­er polit­i­cal dynam­ic embrac­ing advo­ca­cy of the elim­i­na­tion of for­mal nation­al bor­ders in Europe in favor of “region­al­ist plans.” Just such region­al­ist advo­ca­cy was the focal point of a promi­nent arti­cle (with accom­pa­ny­ing maps of the pro­ject­ed realign­ment) in Die Zeit, a major Ger­man week­ly.

Region­al­ist advo­ca­cy has a sig­nif­i­cant past, with the ear­ly post­war CIA and Allen Dulles hav­ing embraced such a dynam­ic. ” . . . . the fed­er­al­ists had ini­tial­ly been sup­port­ed and con­trolled by the CIA pre­de­ces­sor, the Office of Strate­gic Ser­vices (OSS) and [one of its top spies] Alan Dulles, resid­ing in Bern, and lat­er by the CIA itself. . . .”

In addi­tion, the region­al­ist dyanam­ic enjoyed the sup­port of long-time Ger­man finance min­is­ter Wolf­gang Schauble, whose advo­ca­cy and imple­men­ta­tion of bru­tal fis­cal aus­ter­i­ty helped beg­gar much of the EU, includ­ing Spain, fol­low­ing the finan­cial cri­sis of 2008. ” . . . . Wolf­gang Schäu­ble, as Pres­i­dent of the Asso­ci­a­tion of Euro­pean Bor­der Regions (AEBR) in the ear­ly 1980’s, was also pro­mot­ing region­al­ist plans. Inspired by for­mer Nazi func­tionar­ies, the AEBR crit­i­cized the ‘nation-state’s bar­ri­er effect’ of bor­ders in the inter­ests of large cor­po­ra­tions. . . . For­mer Nazi func­tionar­ies were active­ly par­tic­i­pat­ing both on the AEBR’s com­mit­tees and in the imme­di­ate entourage of its plan­ning of the ‘region­al­iza­tion’ of the bor­der regions, includ­ing Gerd Jans, the for­mer mem­ber of the Waf­fen SS in the Nether­lands, Kon­rad Mey­er, respon­si­ble for the Naz­i’s ‘Gen­er­alplan Ost,’ Her­mann Josef Abs, of the Deutsche Bank, as well as Alfred Toepfer, described by the pub­li­cist Hans-Rüdi­ger Minow as ‘infa­mous for his bor­der sub­ver­sion of France’s Alsace.’ In an exten­sive study, Minow describes the con­ti­nu­ities of the Naz­i’s con­cepts. . . .”

Despite an ini­tial impres­sion of “region­al­ism” that many might see as alien, The Schauble/AEBR/regionalism dyan­mic ide­ol­o­gy may be seen as some­thing of a sub­sidiary ele­ment of glob­al­iza­tion. ” . . . .  .In 1979, Schäu­ble became pres­i­dent of the Asso­ci­a­tion of Euro­pean Bor­der Regions (AEBR), an orga­ni­za­tion with the objec­tive of down­grad­ing the sig­nif­i­cance of bor­ders in Europe. Busi­ness inter­ests played an impor­tant role, which is why the AEBR could find reli­able sup­port­ers in indus­try. A ‘Euro­pean Char­ter on Bor­der and Cross-Bor­der Regions,’ passed by the AEBR in 1981, stip­u­lat­ed that the ‘elim­i­na­tion of eco­nom­ic and infra­struc­tur­al bar­ri­ers’ must urgent­ly be pur­sued. . . .”

The imple­men­ta­tion of region­al­iza­tion would facil­i­tate Ger­man dom­i­na­tion of Europe, which has met resis­tance from poor­er EU and EMU coun­tries over the aus­ter­i­ty doc­trine favored by Wolf­gang Schauble. ” . . . . Eco­nom­ic maps by the EU’s Euro­stat sta­tis­tics admin­is­tra­tion show the regions where Europe’s wealth and, there­fore, Europe’s eco­nom­ic pow­er is con­cen­trat­ed, a block with its cen­ters in south­ern and cen­tral Ger­many, to the west, in Flan­ders and spread­ing to seg­ments of the Nether­lands, and to the South to parts of Aus­tria and North­ern Italy and in var­i­ous sep­a­rate regions of West­ern and North­ern Europe. A num­ber of these regions main­tain close rela­tions to Ger­many, or to the Ger­man regions. (german-foreign-policy.com reported.[11]) This clear­ly Ger­man-dom­i­nat­ed block would hard­ly have any dif­fi­cul­ty con­trol­ling a ‘Europe of the Regions.’ . . . .”

Also worth not­ing is the fact that the Cat­alon­ian inde­pen­dence move­ment embraces a Cat­alon­ian iden­ti­ty that involves peo­ple from France, as well as Spain: ” . . . . The Cata­lan move­ment cur­rent­ly push­ing for seces­sion is in fact large­ly defin­ing itself eth­ni­cal­ly. The autonomous move­ment has been close­ly coop­er­at­ing with French cit­i­zens, who live out­side the Span­ish region of Cat­alo­nia, but also con­sid­er them­selves ‘eth­nic Cata­lans.’ At their ral­lies one can hear ‘Nei­ther France nor Spain! Only one coun­try, Cat­alo­nia!’ . . . .”

The two Twit­ter accounts that appear to account for near­ly a third of all Twit­ter traf­fic with the #Cat­alo­nia hash­tag, in ref­er­ence to the Cat­alon­ian seces­sion move­ment belong to Julian Assange and Edward Snow­den.

 Of more  than pass­ing inter­est, under the cir­cum­stances, is the Twit­ter effort by both Julian Assange and Edward Snow­den on behalf of Cat­alon­ian inde­pen­dence.

 As seen in many past pro­grams and posts, Snow­den and Assange are as far to the right as it is pos­si­ble to be.

 Their cyber­lib­er­tar­i­an activism and their sup­port for Cat­alon­ian inde­pen­dence is root­ed in anar­cho-lib­er­tar­i­an eco­nom­ic the­o­ry. See­ing the dis­so­lu­tion of nation­al gov­ern­ments as desir­able, their sup­port for the prin­ci­ple of seces­sion is root­ed in what Mus­soli­ni termed “cor­po­ratism.”

 Snow­den and Assange’s osten­si­bly “lib­er­at­ing” doc­trines, if put into effect, would leave cit­i­zen­ry  at the mer­cy of unfet­tered eco­nom­ic will, exer­cised by cor­po­ra­tions and their asso­ci­at­ed elites.

Snow­den specif­i­cal­ly appears to be advo­cat­ing that no seces­sion move­ment any­where ever can be reject­ed by the gov­ern­ment under the premise that self-deter­mi­na­tion is a human right, view­ing this as a “nat­ur­al law” issue.

In that con­text, the right to secede is cham­pi­oned by the Lib­er­tar­i­an far-right, all the way down to the right to indi­vid­u­als to secede from all gov­ern­ment. As this piece from Lib­er­tar­i­an David S. D’Amato demon­strates, extend­ing the right to secede down to the indi­vid­ual facil­i­tates the imple­men­ta­tion of an anar­cho-cap­i­tal­ist soci­ety with no gov­ern­ment at all, as seen by fig­ures like Mur­ray Roth­bard. This is envi­sioned as an excel­lent way­of achiev­ing an anar­cho-cap­i­tal­ist utopia.

The Snowden/Assange pro-seces­sion­ist move­ment should also be seen against the back­ground of the Neo-Con­fed­er­ate move­ment, cham­pi­oned by Ron Paul and the Lud­wig Von Mis­es Insti­tute.

 Fol­low­ing cap­ture of 13 per­cent of the vote in Germany’s fed­er­al elec­tions on Sun­day by the Alter­na­tive For Ger­many (AfD), Alexan­der Gauland, the AfD leader, pro­voked out­rage after sug­gest­ing that Ger­mans should no longer be reproached with the Nazi past.

This type of behav­ior appar­ent­ly moti­vat­ed AfD leader Frauke Petry to leave the par­ty, just hours after the elec­tion over its extrem­ism.

Pro­gram High­lights Include:

1.-Review of Dorothy Thomp­son’s 1941 arti­cle about what a Nazi vic­to­ry in Europe would look like–a sce­nario that bears con­sid­er­able resem­blance to the region­al­iza­tion plan dis­cussed above.
2.-Discussion of the poten­tial for­tunes of Aus­tri­a’s Free­dom Par­ty, formed in 1956 as a vehi­cle for the re-intro­duc­tion of Aus­tri­an Third Reich alum­ni into that nation’s polit­i­cal process.

FTR #983 Fascism, 2017 World Tour, Part 2

As the title indi­cates, this pro­gram exam­ines man­i­fes­ta­tions of fas­cism around the world.

In Europe, we ana­lyze:

1.-The reca­pit­u­la­tion of Nazi and fas­cist ele­ments in the cur­rent Bul­gar­i­an coali­tion gov­ern­ment of Boyko Borisov. (Bul­gar­ia was a Nazi ally in World War II.)
2.-The vital­i­ty of “regionalism”–a political/economic doc­trine that advo­cates the seces­sion of key pros­per­ous regions from nation states.
3.-Analysis of region­al­ism as an appli­ca­tion of glob­al­ist eco­nom­ic the­o­ry to Euorope.
4.-The his­to­ry of regionalism’s advoa­cy by Third Reich vet­er­an the­o­reti­cians.
5.-Edward Snow­den and Julian Assange’s sup­port for Cata­lan seces­sion from Spain.
6.-The suc­cess of the AfD in Ger­man elec­tions.
7.-AfD politi­cian Alexan­der Gauland’s state­ment that Ger­mans should be proud of what that country’s sol­diers accom­plished in World War II.
8.-The Aus­tri­an Free­dom Party’s pro­ject­ed suc­cess in upcom­ing elec­tions. The par­ty was formed in 1956 by Third Reich vet­er­ans as a vehi­cle for re-intro­duc­ing Aus­tri­an Nazis into the country’s polit­i­cal life.

In Latin Amer­i­ca, we exam­ine:

1.-The ver­dict that Argen­tine AMIA bomb­ing inves­ti­ga­tor Alber­to Nisman’s death was a mur­der, not a sui­cide.
2.-Review of the AMIA bomb­ing inves­ti­ga­tion.
3.-The dis­cov­ery of a cache of Nazi arti­facts, includ­ing devices used for deter­min­ing racial puri­ty. Hitler appar­ent­ly posed with some of the arti­fi­cats.
4.-The role of Nisman’s wid­ow as the judge inves­ti­gat­ing the Nazi arti­fact case.
5.-Operational links between Amer­i­can Nazi Christo­pher Cantwell and the Koch Broth­ers-fund­ed Lud­wig Von Mis­es Insti­tute in Brazil.

In the Unit­ed States, we detail:

1.-How Bre­it­bart active­ly pro­mot­ed Neo-Nazism, while down­play­ing what it was actu­al­ly doing.
2.-How white suprema­cist and Nazi ele­ments are suc­cess­ful­ly using YouTube to main­stream fas­cist and racist views.

In the Mid­dle East, we high­light:

1.-Benjamin Netanyahu’s polit­i­cal con­nec­tions with the Thyssen/Krupp firm, one of the lynch­pins of the Bor­mann cap­i­tal net­work.
2.-Yair Netanyahu’s attri­bu­tion of his father’s polit­i­cal dif­fi­cul­ties to sab­o­tage by an inter­na­tion­al Jew­ish con­spir­a­cy.
3.-Ronald Regan’s 1981 cita­tion of Ibn Khal­dun as a key advo­cate for sup­ply-side eco­nom­ics.
4.-Review of the Mus­lim Brotherhood’s embrace of the views of Ibn Khal­dun.

FTR #981 The Ukrainian Fascist Foundation of the “Russia-Gate” Psy-Op

In FTR #967, we not­ed the Ukrain­ian fas­cist affil­i­a­tion of Andrei Arte­menko, a Ukrain­ian mem­ber of Par­lia­ment who worked with CIA and FBI-con­nect­ed Trump busi­ness asso­ciate Felix Sater. Alleged by our media and gov­ern­ment to have sig­ni­fied “Russ­ian influ­ence” on the Trump admin­is­tra­tion, this Sater/Artemenko gam­bit was actu­al­ly an ANTI-Russ­ian con­spir­a­cy.

In this pro­gram, we high­light the pro­found extent to which the “evi­dence” in the Rus­sia-Gate “inves­ti­ga­tion” tracks back to the very same OUN/B suc­ces­sor orga­ni­za­tions we have cov­ered in so many of our pre­vi­ous pro­grams:

1.-A sto­ry not­ing the prob­a­ble Dnipropetro­vsk ori­gin of the mis­sile tech­nol­o­gy appar­ent­ly facil­i­tat­ing North Kore­a’s guid­ed mis­sile tech­nol­o­gy doc­u­ment­ed the polit­i­cal affil­i­a­tion of Igor Kolo­moisky [Kolo­moiskoy], gov­er­nor of the “Dnipro” dis­trict: ” . . . . So, among the Kolo­moisky-backed mili­tias was the Azov bat­tal­ion whose mem­bers marched with Swastikas and oth­er Nazi insignias. . . . . . . . In response to the reports of pos­si­ble Ukrain­ian col­lu­sion in North Korea’s mis­sile pro­gram, Olek­san­dr Turchynov, sec­re­tary of the Ukrain­ian nation­al secu­ri­ty and defense coun­cil, issued a bizarre denial sug­gest­ing that The New York Times and U.S. intel­li­gence agen­cies were pawns of Rus­sia. . . . Press reports about Turchynov’s state­ment left out two salient facts: that as the inter­im Pres­i­dent fol­low­ing the Feb­ru­ary 2014 coup, Turchynov ordered Right Sek­tor mil­i­tants to begin the bloody siege of rebel-held Slo­vian­sk, a key esca­la­tion in the con­flict, and that Turchynov was the one who appoint­ed Kolo­moisky to be the ruler of Dnipropetro­vsk.”
2.-The jour­nal­is­tic view­point on a Ukrain­ian hack­er alleged­ly used by “Russ­ian hack­ers” against the U.S. comes from  Anton Gerashchenko, part of the same milieu as Pravy Sek­tor, Azov, etc. Gerashchenko is, in fact, an apol­o­gist for Azov, as dis­cussed in FTR #‘s 803, 804, 808, 818:  ” . . . . Secu­ri­ty experts were ini­tial­ly left scratch­ing their heads when the Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­ri­ty on Dec. 29 released tech­ni­cal evi­dence of Russ­ian hack­ing that seemed to point not to Rus­sia, but rather to Ukraine. . . A mem­ber of Ukraine’s Par­lia­ment with close ties to the secu­ri­ty ser­vices, Anton Gerashchenko, said that the inter­ac­tion was online or by phone and that the Ukrain­ian pro­gram­mer had been paid to write cus­tomized mal­ware with­out know­ing its pur­pose, only lat­er learn­ing it was used in Russ­ian hack­ing. . . . It is not clear whether the spe­cif­ic mal­ware the pro­gram­mer cre­at­ed was used to hack the D.N.C. servers. . . .”
3.-Reading between the lines, an oth­er­wise char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly pro­pa­gan­dized New York Times arti­cle encap­su­lat­ed crit­i­cal­ly impor­tant infor­ma­tion: “. . . . While still polit­i­cal­ly influ­enced, Ukrain­ian law enforce­ment is no longer a swamp of incom­pe­tence and cor­rup­tion. It has been able to mon­i­tor Mr. Man­afort’s for­mer busi­ness asso­ciates and turn up evi­dence of Russ­ian hack­ing in the 2016 Unit­ed States elec­tion, in part owing to Amer­i­can sup­port. . . .”
4.-Exemplifying the Ukrain­ian fas­cists at the epi­cen­ter of “Rus­sia-Gate” are a group of Ukrain­ian hack­ers, work­ing in tan­dem with fas­cist politi­cians like the afore­men­tioned Anton Gerashchenko. The hacker/Ukrainian fas­cist link spawned the “Pro­pOrNot” list of “Russian/Kremlin/Putin” dupes in the U.S. media: This list was com­piled by the Ukrain­ian intel­li­gence ser­vice, inte­ri­or min­istry and–ahem–hackers: “. . . . One of the more fright­en­ing poli­cies enact­ed by the cur­rent oli­garch-nation­al­ist regime in Kiev is an online black­list [42] of jour­nal­ists accused of col­lab­o­rat­ing with pro-Russ­ian ‘ter­ror­ists.’ [43]  The web­site, ‘Myrotvorets’ [43] or ‘Peacemaker’—was set up by Ukrain­ian hack­ers work­ing with state intel­li­gence and police, all of which tend to share the same ultra­na­tion­al­ist ide­olo­gies as Paru­biy and the new­ly-appoint­ed neo-Nazi chief of the Nation­al Police. . . . The web­site is designed to fright­en and muz­zle jour­nal­ists from report­ing any­thing but the pro-nation­al­ist par­ty line, and it has the back­ing of gov­ern­ment offi­cials, spies and police—including the SBU (Ukraine’s suc­ces­sor to the KGB), the pow­er­ful Inte­ri­or Min­is­ter Avakov and his noto­ri­ous far-right deputy, Anton Geraschenko. Ukraine’s jour­nal­ist black­list website—operated by Ukrain­ian hack­ers work­ing with state intelligence—led to a rash of death threats against the doxxed jour­nal­ists, whose email address­es, phone num­bers and oth­er pri­vate infor­ma­tion was post­ed anony­mous­ly to the web­site.
5.-A Ukrain­ian activist named Alexan­dra Chalu­pa has been instru­men­tal in dis­trib­ut­ing the “Rus­sia did it” dis­in­for­ma­tion to Hillary Clin­ton and influ­enc­ing the progress of the dis­in­for­ma­tion in the media. ” . . . . One of the key media sources [46] who blamed the DNC hacks on Rus­sia, ramp­ing up fears of cryp­to-Putin­ist infil­tra­tion, is a Ukrain­ian-Amer­i­can lob­by­ist work­ing for the DNC. She is Alexan­dra Chalupa—described as the head of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation­al Committee’s oppo­si­tion research on Rus­sia and on Trump, and founder and pres­i­dent of the Ukrain­ian lob­by group ‘US Unit­ed With Ukraine Coali­tion’ [47], which lob­bied hard to pass a 2014 bill increas­ing loans and mil­i­tary aid to Ukraine, impos­ing sanc­tions on Rus­sians, and tight­ly align­ing US and Ukraine geostrate­gic inter­ests. . . . In one leaked DNC email [50] ear­li­er this year, Chalu­pa boasts to DNC Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Direc­tor Luis Miran­da that she brought Isikoff to a US-gov­ern­ment spon­sored Wash­ing­ton event fea­tur­ing 68 Ukrain­ian jour­nal­ists, where Chalu­pa was invit­ed ‘to speak specif­i­cal­ly about Paul Man­afort.’ In turn, Isikoff named her as the key inside source [46] ‘prov­ing’ that the Rus­sians were behind the hacks, and that Trump’s cam­paign was under the spell of Krem­lin spies and sor­cer­ers. . . .”
6.-Alleged “Russ­ian agent” Paul Manafort–identified in FTR #919 as a prob­a­ble “advance man” for regimes tar­get­ed for destabilization–may well have been the per­son who rec­om­mend­ed to his “client” Yanukovich to fire on the Maid­an demon­stra­tors. It was that gun­fire that sig­nalled the end of Yanukovich’s gov­ern­ment. This rein­forces Mr. Emory’s take on Man­afort. ” . . . . The lawyer’s demands for expla­na­tion spring from the hack­ing ear­li­er this year of the iPhone of Mr Manafort’s daugh­ter, [since con­firmed as genuine–D.E.] Andrea, with around 300,000 mes­sages pub­lished in the dark web. One of the texts sent to her sis­ter Jes­si­ca said: ‘Don’t fool your­self. That mon­ey we have is blood mon­ey.’ It con­tin­ued ‘You know he has killed peo­ple in Ukraine? Know­ing­ly, as a tac­tic to out­rage the world and get focus on Ukraine. Remem­ber when there were all those deaths tak­ing place. A while back. About a year ago. Revolts and what not. Do you know whose strat­e­gy that was to cause that, to send those peo­ple get them slaugh­tered.’ . . . .”
7.-Reinforcing the hypoth­e­sis that the Maid­an shoot­ings were a provo­ca­tion is the dis­clo­sure by Ukraine’s chief pros­e­cu­tor that the rifles alleged­ly used to fire on the Maid­an demon­stra­tors were recov­ered by an alleged Yanukovich oper­a­tive and leader of the snipers who was one of the demon­stra­tors on the Maid­an! “ . . . Ukraine’s Pros­e­cu­tor Gen­er­al Yuriy Lut­senko says that the man who helped the so-called “black hun­dred” of police task force Berkut, who had been shoot­ing at pro­test­ers dur­ing the Rev­o­lu­tion of Dig­ni­ty, flee Kyiv and delib­er­ate­ly drowned their weapons to con­ceal evi­dence, was him­self one of the par­tic­i­pants of the Maid­an protests. ‘With the help of mil­i­tary coun­ter­in­tel­li­gence, we have found weapons of the ‘black hun­dred,’ includ­ing a sniper rifle, which the entire coun­try saw on footage show­ing the shoot­ing at the pro­test­ers from out­side the Octo­ber Palace,” he told the 112 Ukraine TV chan­nel. . . . ‘We found it with a large num­ber of auto­mat­ic rifles on the bot­tom of one of Kiev’s lakes. They were cut and drowned in one batch by a sin­gle group, whose leader is one of the tar­gets of our inves­ti­ga­tion. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, this man who, accord­ing to our ver­sion, upon the orders of [for­mer Inte­ri­or Min­is­ter Vitaliy] Zakharchenko helped the ‘black hun­dred’ flee Kyiv, destroyed and drowned their weapons, he, him­self, was with us on the Maid­an,’ Lut­senko said. . . . ”
8.-The sniper activ­i­ty in the Maid­an must be weighed against the fact that Nazi-linked ele­ments from the Azov milieu were serv­ing as snipers in Kiev at the time. Were they con­nect­ed to the shoot­ings of demon­stra­tors?
9.-The sup­posed “evi­dence” of Russ­ian hack­ing in the U.S. elec­tion comes from Crowd­Strike, whose co-founder and chief tech­nol­o­gy officer–Dmitry Alperovitch–is deeply tied to the NATO/OUN/B milieu installed in pow­er in Ukraine: ” . . . . Dmitri Alper­ovitch is also a senior fel­low at the Atlantic Coun­cil. The con­nec­tion between Alper­ovitch and the Atlantic Coun­cil has gone large­ly unre­marked upon, but it is rel­e­vant giv­en that the Atlantic Council—which is is fund­ed in part by the US State Depart­ment, NATO, the gov­ern­ments of Latvia and Lithua­nia, the Ukrain­ian World Con­gress, and the Ukrain­ian oli­garch Vic­tor Pinchuk—has been among the loud­est voic­es call­ing for a new Cold War with Rus­sia. As I point­ed out in the pages of The Nation in Novem­ber, the Atlantic Coun­cil has spent the past sev­er­al years pro­duc­ing some of the most vir­u­lent spec­i­mens of the new Cold War pro­pa­gan­da. . . .”

Pro­gram High­lights Include:

1.-Information sup­ple­ment­ing the dis­cus­sion from FTR #967 con­cern­ing attempts by the OUN/B suc­ces­sor orga­ni­za­tions to oust Poroshenko.
2.-Efforts by Yulia Tymoshenko to pass infor­ma­tion about Poroshenko to U.S. author­i­ties.
3.-The role of for­mer Ukrain­ian intel­li­gence chief, Pravy Sek­tor inti­mate Valen­tyn Naly­vaichenko in Tymoshenko’s efforts.
4.-The role of Naly­vaichenko in pro­vid­ing dirt on Poroshenko to Arte­menko
5.-The role of Atlantic Coun­cil financier Vik­tor Pinchuk in advanc­ing “peace plans” being attrib­uted to “Russia/Putin/the Kremlin/dupes of same.”

FTR #965 Are We Going to Have a Third World War?

Recent devel­op­ments are sug­ges­tive of the omi­nous pos­si­bil­i­ty of an immi­nent Third World War. We present some new infor­ma­tion and recap and fur­ther ana­lyze sto­ries cov­ered in pre­vi­ous pro­grams in order to under­score and high­light the poten­tial dev­as­ta­tion of these events.

As the furor (“fuehrer”?) sur­round­ing the poten­tial­ly lethal polit­i­cal hoax known as “Rus­sia-gate” gains momen­tum, it should be not­ed that the point man for the Trump busi­ness inter­ests in their deal­ings with Rus­sia is Felix Sater. A Russ­ian-born immi­grant, Sater is a pro­fes­sion­al crim­i­nal and a con­vict­ed felon with his­tor­i­cal links to the Mafia. Beyond that, and more impor­tant­ly, Sater is an FBI infor­mant and a CIA con­tract agent: “. . . . There is every indi­ca­tion that the extra­or­di­nar­i­ly lenient treat­ment result­ed from Sater play­ing a get-out-of-jail free card. Short­ly before his secret guilty plea, Sater became a free­lance oper­a­tive of the Cen­tral Intel­li­gence Agency. One of his fel­low stock swindlers, Sal­va­tore Lau­ria, wrote a book about it. The Scor­pi­on and the Frog is described on its cov­er as ‘the true sto­ry of one man’s fraud­u­lent rise and fall in the Wall Street of the nineties.’ Accord­ing to Lauria–and the court files that have been unsealed–Sater helped the CIA buy small mis­siles before they got to ter­ror­ists. He also pro­vid­ed oth­er pur­port­ed nation­al secu­ri­ty ser­vices for a report­ed fee of $300,000. Sto­ries abound as to what else Sater may or may not have done in the are­na of nation­al secu­ri­ty. . . .”

Sater was active on behalf of the Trumps in the fall of 2015: “. . . . Sater worked on a plan for a Trump Tow­er in Moscow as recent­ly as the fall of 2015, but he said that had come to a halt because of Trump’s pres­i­den­tial cam­paign. . . .”

Sater was ini­ti­at­ing con­tact between the Rus­sians and “Team Trump” in Jan­u­ary of this year: “ . . . . Nev­er­the­less, in late Jan­u­ary, Sater and a Ukrain­ian law­mak­er report­ed­ly met with Trump’s per­son­al lawyer, Michael Cohen, at a New York hotel. Accord­ing to the [New York] Times, they dis­cussed a plan that involved the U.S. lift­ing sanc­tions against Rus­sia, and Cohen said he hand-deliv­ered the plan in a sealed enve­lope to then-nation­al secu­ri­ty advi­sor Michael Fly­nn. Cohen lat­er denied deliv­er­ing the enve­lope to any­one in the White House, accord­ing to the Wash­ing­ton Post. . . .”

A stun­ning devel­op­ment con­cerns extreme ret­i­cence on the part of the U.S. intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty:

The Office of the Direc­tor of Nation­al Intel­li­gence had an “inter­est­ing” response to a Free­dom of Infor­ma­tion Act law­suit demand­ing the release of the clas­si­fied report giv­en to Pres­i­dent Oba­ma back in Jan­u­ary pur­port­ing to show the Russ­ian gov­ern­ment was behind the hacks. Accord­ing to the ODNI, the request­ed doc­u­ment would present a risk to human intel­li­gence sources by reveal­ing the com­par­a­tive weight giv­en to human vs tech­ni­cal evi­dence, risk­ing US sources and meth­ods. But the ODNI went fur­ther, sug­gest­ing that even releas­ing a ful­ly redact­ed doc­u­ment would present sim­i­lar risks!

It is NOT easy to see the ODNI’s reluc­tance to release even a ful­ly-redact­ed copy of the report as any­thing but disin­gen­u­ous. In the con­text of poten­tial­ly dev­as­tat­ing dete­ri­o­ra­tion of Russian/U.S. rela­tions over Syr­ia, Ukraine, and the Russ­ian “elec­tion-hack­ing” uproar, the ODNI’s behav­ior can­not be any­thing but dis­qui­et­ing:

” . . . . The intel­li­gence offi­cial argued that a redact­ed ver­sion of the orig­i­nal report would allow a trained eye to assess ‘com­par­a­tive weight’ of human intel­li­gence and sig­nals intel­li­gence report­ing includ­ed in the com­pendi­um. Release of some of the infor­ma­tion the pri­va­cy-focused orga­ni­za­tion wants made pub­lic ‘could prove fatal to U.S. human intel­li­gence sources,’ [Deputy Direc­tor of Nation­al Intel­li­gence for Intel­li­gence Inte­gra­tion Edward] Gis­taro warned.

Gis­taro also appears to argue that even if offi­cials blacked out the whole report, high­ly clas­si­fied infor­ma­tion would be at risk.

‘I agree with the [Nation­al Intel­li­gence Coun­cil] that a heav­i­ly or even ful­ly redact­ed ver­sion of the clas­si­fied report can not be pub­licly released with­out jeop­ar­diz­ing nation­al secu­ri­ty infor­ma­tion prop­er­ly clas­si­fied as SECRET or TOP SECRET,’ he wrote. . . . ‘The ODNI should release the com­plete report to EPIC so that the pub­lic and the Con­gress can under­stand the full extent of the Russ­ian inter­fer­ence with the 2016 Pres­i­den­tial elec­tion,’ EPIC’s Marc Roten­berg told POLITICO Tues­day. ‘It is already clear that gov­ern­ment secre­cy is frus­trat­ing mean­ing­ful over­sight. The FBI, for exam­ple, will not even iden­ti­fy the states that were tar­get­ed by Rus­sia.’ . . . ”

With the high-pro­file hacks being attributed–almost cer­tain­ly falsely–to Rus­sia, there are omi­nous devel­op­ments tak­ing place that may well lead to a Third World War. Dur­ing the clos­ing days of his Pres­i­den­cy, Oba­ma autho­rized the plant­i­ng of cyber weapons on Russ­ian com­put­er net­works. Oba­ma did this after talk­ing with Putin on the Hot Line, estab­lished to pre­vent a Third World War. Putin denied inter­fer­ing in the U.S. elec­tion.

The con­clu­sion that Rus­sia hacked the U.S. elec­tion on Putin’s orders appears to have been based on a CIA source in the Krem­lin. Even when that intel­li­gence was deliv­ered, oth­er agen­cies weren’t ready to accept the CIA’s con­clu­sion and it took intel­li­gence from anoth­er nation (not named) to pro­vide the final intel­li­gence tip­ping point that led to a broad-based con­clu­sion the not only was the Russ­ian gov­ern­ment behind the cyber­at­tacks but that Vladimir Putin him­self ordered it.

That ally’s intel­li­gence is described as “the most crit­i­cal tech­ni­cal intel­li­gence on Rus­sia,” how­ev­er the NSA still wasn’t con­vinced based on what sounds like a lack of con­fi­dence in that source. Thus, it looks like a CIA Krem­lin source and an unnamed for­eign intel­li­gence agency with ques­tion­able cre­den­tials are the basis of what appears to be a like­ly future full-scale US/Russian cyber­war.

Of para­mount sig­nif­i­cance is the fact that IF, on Putin’s orders (and we are to believe such) Rus­sia con­tin­ued to hack U.S. com­put­er sys­tems to influ­ence the elec­tion, Putin would have to have gone utter­ly mad. Those hacks would have pre­clud­ed any rap­proche­ment between Rus­sia and the Unit­ed States under a Pres­i­dent Trump. There is no indi­ca­tion that Putin went off the deep end.

Also augur­ing a pos­si­ble Third World War are two devel­op­ments in Syr­ia. Sey­mour Hersh pub­lished an arti­cle in “Die Welt” reveal­ing that, not only was the April 4 alleged Sarin attack NOT a chem­i­cal weapons attack but there was wide­spread knowl­edge of this in Amer­i­can mil­i­tary and intel­li­gence cir­cles.

What did the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty know about the attack? The Russ­ian and Syr­i­an air force had informed the US in advance of that airstrike that they had intel­li­gence that top lev­el lead­ers of Ahrar al-Sham and Jab­hat al-Nus­ra were meet­ing in that build­ing and they informed of the US of the attack plan in advance of the attack and that it was on a “high-val­ue” tar­get. And the attack involved the unusu­al use of a guid­ed bomb and Syria’s top pilots. ” . . . . Russ­ian and Syr­i­an intel­li­gence offi­cials, who coor­di­nate oper­a­tions close­ly with the Amer­i­can com­mand posts, made it clear that the planned strike on Khan Sheikhoun was spe­cial because of the high-val­ue tar­get. ‘It was a red-hot change. The mis­sion was out of the ordi­nary – scrub the sked,’ the senior advis­er told me. ‘Every oper­a­tions offi­cer in the region’ – in the Army, Marine Corps, Air Force, CIA and NSA – ‘had to know there was some­thing going on. The Rus­sians gave the Syr­i­an Air Force a guid­ed bomb and that was a rar­i­ty. They’re skimpy with their guid­ed bombs and rarely share them with the Syr­i­an Air Force. And the Syr­i­ans assigned their best pilot to the mis­sion, with the best wing­man.’ The advance intel­li­gence on the tar­get, as sup­plied by the Rus­sians, was giv­en the high­est pos­si­ble score inside the Amer­i­can com­mu­ni­ty. . . .”

Fol­low­ing the attack, US intel­li­gence con­clud­ed that there was no sarin gas attack, Assad wouldn’t have been that polit­i­cal­ly sui­ci­dal. The symp­toms of chem­i­cal poi­son­ing fol­low­ing the bomb­ing was like­ly due to a mix­ture of chlo­rine, fer­til­iz­ers, and oth­er chem­i­cals stored in the build­ing that was tar­get­ed by the Syr­i­an air­force cre­at­ed by sec­ondary explo­sions from the ini­tial bomb­ing. ” . . . ‘This was not a chem­i­cal weapons strike,’ the advis­er said. ‘That’s a fairy tale. . . .”

The symp­toms of chem­i­cal poi­son­ing fol­low­ing the bomb­ing was like­ly due to a mix­ture of chlo­rine, fer­til­iz­ers, and oth­er chem­i­cals stored in the build­ing that was tar­get­ed by the Syr­i­an air­force cre­at­ed by sec­ondary explo­sions from the ini­tial bomb­ing. ” . . . . A Bomb Dam­age Assess­ment (BDA) by the U.S. mil­i­tary lat­er deter­mined that the heat and force of the 500-pound Syr­i­an bomb trig­gered a series of sec­ondary explo­sions that could have gen­er­at­ed a huge tox­ic cloud that began to spread over the town, formed by the release of the fer­til­iz­ers, dis­in­fec­tants and oth­er goods stored in the base­ment, its effect mag­ni­fied by the dense morn­ing air, which trapped the fumes close to the ground. . . .”

The behav­ior of the Trump admin­is­tra­tion was not only in direct con­flict with intel­li­gence on the attack, but rein­forced pro­pa­gan­da by some of the Al-Qae­da-linked jihadists the West has been using as proxy war­riors in Syr­ia and else­where: ” . . . . ‘The Salafists and jihadists got every­thing they want­ed out of their hyped-up Syr­i­an nerve gas ploy,’ the senior advis­er to the U.S. intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty told me, refer­ring to the flare up of ten­sions between Syr­ia, Rus­sia and Amer­i­ca. ‘The issue is, what if there’s anoth­er false flag sarin attack cred­it­ed to hat­ed Syr­ia? Trump has upped the ante and paint­ed him­self into a cor­ner with his deci­sion to bomb. And do not think these guys are not plan­ning the next faked attack. Trump will have no choice but to bomb again, and hard­er. He’s inca­pable of say­ing he made a mis­take.’ . . .”

Pro­gram High­lights Include: Review of a Trump admin­is­tra­tion warn­ing of anoth­er sup­posed, impend­ing “Syr­i­an chem­i­cal weapons strike”–a warn­ing that has since been retract­ed; dis­cus­sion of bril­liant Nazi hack­er Andrew Aueren­heimer’s orches­tra­tion of an “Alt-right” online intim­i­da­tion cam­paign against CNN employ­ees; Aueren­heimer’s cur­rent res­i­dence in Ukraine; the omi­nous pos­si­bil­i­ty of the activation/manipulation of the NSA cyber-weapons installed on Russ­ian com­put­er net­works by a third par­ty (per­haps some­one with the capa­bil­i­ties of the bril­liant Aueren­heimer); review of the obser­va­tions by a Ger­man professor–opposed to Nazism/Hitler–who described the essence of what it was like, sub­jec­tive­ly, to live through the rise of Hitler–his obser­va­tion pre­sent­ed in the con­text of the ODNI’s deci­sion not to release even a ful­ly-redact­ed ver­sion of the intel­li­gence report on “Russ­ian med­dling” in the U.S. elec­tion: ” . . . . . . . . What hap­pened here was the grad­ual habit­u­a­tion of the peo­ple, lit­tle by lit­tle, to being gov­erned by sur­prise, to receiv­ing deci­sions delib­er­at­ed in secret, to believ­ing that the sit­u­a­tion was so com­pli­cat­ed that the gov­ern­ment had to act on infor­ma­tion which the peo­ple could not under­stand because of nation­al­i­ty secu­ri­ty, so dan­ger­ous that even if the peo­ple the peo­ple could under­stand it, it could not be released because of nation­al secu­ri­ty. . . .”

FTR #964 Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics

As we have not­ed in many pre­vi­ous broad­casts and posts, cyber attacks are eas­i­ly dis­guised. Per­pe­trat­ing a “cyber false flag” oper­a­tion is dis­turbing­ly easy to do.

This is of para­mount sig­nif­i­cance in eval­u­at­ing the increas­ing­ly neo-McCarthyite New Cold War pro­pa­gan­da about “Russ­ian inter­fer­ence” in the U.S. elec­tion.

Com­pound­ing the sit­u­a­tion are some recent dis­clo­sures and devel­op­ments:

1.–We learn that the CIA’s hack­ing tools are specif­i­cal­ly craft­ed to mask CIA author­ship of the attacks. Most sig­nif­i­cant­ly, for our pur­pos­es, is the fact that the Agen­cy’s hack­ing tools are engi­neered in such a way as to per­mit the authors of the event to rep­re­sent them­selves as Russ­ian.

2.–The NSA’s elite hack­ing tech­nol­o­gy has been made wide­ly avail­able to the hack­ing com­mu­ni­ty, cour­tesy of “The Shad­ow Bro­kers.”

3.–During the 2016 Pres­i­den­tial cam­paign, Michael Fly­nn was pro­fes­sion­al­ly involved with numer­ous cyber-secu­ri­ty and cyber arms man­u­fac­tur­ing firms: “ . . . . The month before Fly­nn joined the advi­so­ry board of OSY Tech­nolo­gies, NSO Group opened up a new arm called West­Bridge Tech­nolo­gies, Inc., in the D.C. region. (The com­pa­ny was orig­i­nal­ly reg­is­tered in Delaware in 2014, but formed in Mary­land in April 2016.) Led by NSO Group co-founder Lavie, West­Bridge is vying for fed­er­al gov­ern­ment con­tracts for NSO Group’s prod­ucts. Hir­ing Fly­nn would pro­vide NSO Group with a well-con­nect­ed fig­ure in Wash­ing­ton, to help get its foot in the door of the noto­ri­ous­ly insu­lar world of secret intel­li­gence bud­get­ing. . . .When you’re try­ing to build up your busi­ness, you need some­one who has con­nec­tions, some­one who is seen as an author­i­ty and a legit­i­mate pres­ence,” John­son said. Hir­ing some­one with Flynn’s back­ground in intel­li­gence would ‘open up doors that they wouldn’t have had access to,’ John­son said.Throughout 2016, Fly­nn worked for a num­ber of cyber­se­cu­ri­ty firms per­son­al­ly and through his con­sult­ing firm, Fly­nn Intel Group. In addi­tion to his advi­so­ry board seat at OSY Tech­nolo­gies, he sat on the board of Adobe Sys­tems, a large soft­ware com­pa­ny with Pen­ta­gon con­tracts, and the boards of the cyber­se­cu­ri­ty com­pa­nies Green­Zone Sys­tems and HALO Pri­va­cy. (Though Fly­nn described him­self as an Adobe advi­so­ry board mem­ber in his finan­cial dis­clo­sure paper­work, the group said in a state­ment that he pro­vid­ed only “peri­od­ic coun­sel to Adobe’s pub­lic sec­tor team.”) . . .”

4.–NSO Group and OSY Tech­nolo­gies spe­cial­ize in spear-fish­ing attacks, one of the method­olo­gies used in the hacks of U.S. elec­tion com­put­ers. Is there any link between Fly­n­n’s cyber-secu­ri­ty/­cy­ber arms links and the high-pro­file hacks dur­ing the cam­paign?

5.–A GOP tech database–Deep Root–Exposed the data of almost two hun­dred mil­lion Amer­i­can vot­ers to wide­spread scruti­ny. Is there any con­nec­tion between Deep Root, the GOP and the alleged Russ­ian hack­ing of U.S. vot­ing com­put­ers?

Fol­low­ing a Bloomberg report about wide­spread Russ­ian hack­ing of Amer­i­can elec­tions sys­tems: “ . . . . Kay Stim­son, spokes­woman for the Nation­al Asso­ci­a­tion of Sec­re­taries of State, said the mem­bers of her group — which rep­re­sents the chief elec­tion offi­cials in 40 states — were tak­en aback by the alle­ga­tion that 39 states were hacked. ‘We can­not ver­i­fy any infor­ma­tion in that report,’ Stim­son told Ben­zin­ga. “It has some claims that have raised some red flags. I don’t know where they’re get­ting it. We’re not able to assess to the cred­i­bil­i­ty.’ She said that some cyber­se­cu­ri­ty firms were engag­ing in scare tac­tics at the state and local lev­els. ‘There are cyber­se­cu­ri­ty firms mak­ing some wild claims,’ she said. ‘It is a very aggres­sive indus­try.’ . . .”

With the high-pro­file hacks being attributed–almost cer­tain­ly falsely–to Rus­sia, there are omi­nous devel­op­ments tak­ing place that may well lead to a Third World War. Dur­ing the clos­ing days of his Pres­i­den­cy, Oba­ma autho­rized the plant­i­ng of cyber weapons on Russ­ian com­put­er net­works. Oba­ma did this after talk­ing with Putin on the Hot Line, estab­lished to pre­vent a Third World War. Putin denied inter­fer­ing in the U.S. elec­tion.

The con­clu­sion that Rus­sia hacked the U.S. elec­tion on Putin’s orders appears to have been based on a CIA source in the Krem­lin. Even when that intel­li­gence was deliv­ered, oth­er agen­cies weren’t ready to accept the CIA’s con­clu­sion and it took intel­li­gence from anoth­er nation (not named) to pro­vide the final intel­li­gence tip­ping point that led to a broad-based con­clu­sion the not only was the Russ­ian gov­ern­ment behind the cyber­at­tacks but that Vladimir Putin him­self ordered it.

That ally’s intel­li­gence is described as “the most crit­i­cal tech­ni­cal intel­li­gence on Rus­sia,” how­ev­er the NSA still wasn’t con­vinced based on what sounds like a lack of con­fi­dence in that source. Thus, it looks like a CIA Krem­lin source and an unnamed for­eign intel­li­gence agency with ques­tion­able cre­den­tials are the basis of what appears to be a like­ly future full-scale US/Russian cyber­war.

Of para­mount sig­nif­i­cance is the fact that IF, on Putin’s orders (and we are to believe such) Rus­sia con­tin­ued to hack U.S. com­put­er sys­tems to influ­ence the elec­tion, Putin would have to have gone utter­ly mad. Those hacks would have pre­clud­ed any rap­proche­ment between Rus­sia and the Unit­ed States under a Pres­i­dent Trump. There is not indi­ca­tion that Putin went off the deep end.

Also augur­ing a Third World War are two devel­op­ments in Syr­ia. Sey­mour Hersh pub­lished an arti­cle in Die Welt reveal­ing that, not only was the April 4 alleged Sarin attack NOT a chem­i­cal weapons attack but there was wide­spread knowl­edge of this in Amer­i­can mil­i­tary and intel­li­gence cir­cles.

Omi­nous­ly, the Trump White House is claim­ing they have advance knowl­edge of an impend­ing Syr­i­an chem­i­cal weapons strike and will pun­ish Syr­ia heav­i­ly, and hold Rus­sia account­able.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: The fact that the bulk of activ­i­ty detect­ed by the DHS on U.S. elec­tion sys­tems was “scanning”–standard oper­at­ing pro­ce­dure for hack­ing; a for­mer NSA hack­ing specialist–Jake Williams–said that spear-phish­ing oper­a­tion was of “medi­um sophis­ti­ca­tion” that “prac­ti­cal­ly any hack­er can pull off”; the ques­tion of whether or not GOP Sec­re­taries of State might have delib­er­ate­ly respond­ed to the spear-phish­ing e‑mails that per­mit­ted the “hit” on U.S. elec­tion sys­tems; the Russ­ian autho­riza­tion of the use by the Syr­i­an air force of a smart bomb to elim­i­nate Al-Qae­da-linked jihadists; the release of a chem­i­cal cloud as a result of that strike that was caused by sec­ondary explo­sions; Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca’s hir­ing of GOP online data-bas­ing king­pin Dar­ren Bold­ing.

FTR #960 Update on the High Profile Hacks

As indi­cat­ed by the title, this broad­cast updates the high-pro­file hacks, at the epi­cen­ter of “Rus­sia Gate,” the bru­tal polit­i­cal fan­ta­sy that is at the core of Amer­i­can New Cold War pro­pa­gan­da and that may well lead to World War III.

(Oth­er pro­grams deal­ing with this sub­ject include: FTR #‘s 917, 923, 924, 940, 943, 958, 959.)

As we have not­ed in many pre­vi­ous broad­casts and posts, cyber attacks are eas­i­ly dis­guised. Per­pe­trat­ing a “cyber false flag” oper­a­tion is dis­turbing­ly easy to do. In a world where the ver­i­fi­ably false and phys­i­cal­ly impos­si­ble “con­trolled demolition”/Truther non­sense has gained trac­tion, cyber false flag ops are all the more threat­en­ing and sin­is­ter.

Now, we learn that the CIA’s hack­ing tools are specif­i­cal­ly craft­ed to mask CIA author­ship of the attacks. Most sig­nif­i­cant­ly, for our pur­pos­es, is the fact that the Agen­cy’s hack­ing tools are engi­neered in such a way as to per­mit the authors of the event to rep­re­sent them­selves as Russ­ian.

This is of para­mount sig­nif­i­cance in eval­u­at­ing the increas­ing­ly neo-McCarthyite New Cold War pro­pa­gan­da about “Russ­ian inter­fer­ence” in the U.S. elec­tion.

We then high­light the recent con­clu­sions of the French cyber­in­tel­li­gence chief (Guil­laume Poupard) and his warn­ings about the incred­i­ble dan­gers of cyber-misattribution–the ease with which any ran­dom hack­er could car­ry­ing out a spear-phish­ing attack, and his baf­fle­ment at the NSA’s recent Russ­ian attri­bu­tion to the spear-phish­ing French elec­tion hacks.

Char­ac­ter­is­tic of the disin­gen­u­ous, pro­pa­gan­dis­tic spin of Amer­i­can news media on Putin/Russia/the high pro­file hacks is a New York Times arti­cle that accus­es Putin of lay­ing down a pro­pa­gan­da veil to cov­er for alleged Russ­ian hack­ing, omit­ting his remarks that–correctly–note that con­tem­po­rary tech­nol­o­gy eas­i­ly per­mits the mis­at­tri­bu­tion of cyber espionage/hacking.

We then review the grotesque­ly dark com­ic nature of the Macron hacks (sup­pos­ed­ly done by “Russ­ian intel­li­gence”.)

Those “Russ­ian gov­ern­ment hack­ers” real­ly need an OPSEC refresh­er course. The hacked doc­u­ments in the “Macron hack” not only con­tained Cyril­lic text in the meta­da­ta, but also con­tained the name of the last per­son to mod­i­fy the doc­u­ments. That name, “Rosh­ka Georgiy Petro­vichan”, is an employ­ee at Evri­ka, a large IT com­pa­ny that does work for the Russ­ian gov­ern­ment, includ­ing the FSB (Russ­ian intel­li­gence.)

Also found in the meta­da­ta is the email of the per­son who uploaded the files to “archive.org”, and that email address, frankmacher1@gmx.de, is reg­is­tered with a Ger­man free web­mail provider used pre­vi­ous­ly in 2016 phish­ing attacks against the CDU in Ger­many that have been attrib­uted to APT28. It would appear that the “Russ­ian hack­ers” not only left clues sug­gest­ing it was Russ­ian hack­ers behind the hack, but they decid­ed name names this time–their own names.

In relat­ed news, a group of cyber­se­cu­ri­ty researchers study­ing the Macron hack has con­clud­ed that the mod­i­fied doc­u­ments were doc­tored by some­one asso­ci­at­ed with The Dai­ly Stormer neo-Nazi web­site and Andrew “the weev” Auern­heimer.

Aueren­heimer was a guest at Glenn Green­wald and Lau­ra Poitras’s par­ty cel­e­brat­ing their receipt of the Polk award.

“ ‘We strong­ly believe that the fake off­shore doc­u­ments were cre­at­ed by some­one with con­trol of the Dai­ly Stormer serv­er,” said Tord Lund­ström, a com­put­er foren­sics inves­ti­ga­tor at Virtualroad.org.’ . . .”

The pub­lic face, site pub­lish­er of The Dai­ly Stormer is Andrew Anglin. But look who the site is reg­is­tered to: Andrew Auern­heimer (the site archi­tect) who appar­ent­ly resided in Ukraine as of the start of this year.

The analy­sis from the web-secu­ri­ty firm Virtualroad.org. indi­cates that some­one asso­ci­at­ed with the Dai­ly Stormer mod­i­fied those faked documents–very pos­si­bly a high­ly skilled neo-Nazi hack­er like “the weev”.

Based on analy­sis of how the doc­u­ment dump unfold­ed, it’s look­ing like the inex­plic­a­bly self-incrim­i­nat­ing “Russ­ian hack­ers” may have been a bunch of Amer­i­can neo-Nazis. Imag­ine that.

In FTR #917, we under­scored the gen­e­sis of the Seth Rich mur­der con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry with Wik­iLeaks and Julian Assange, who was in touch with Roger Stone dur­ing the 2016 cam­paign. (Stone func­tioned as the unof­fi­cial dirty tricks spe­cial­ist for the Trump cam­paign, a role he has played–with relish–since Water­gate.

The far-right Seth Rich mur­der con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry acquired new grav­i­tas, thanks in part to Kim Schmitz, aka “Kim Dot­com.” We exam­ined Schmitz at length in FTR #812. A syn­op­tic overview of the polit­i­cal and pro­fes­sion­al ori­en­ta­tion of Kim Dot­com is excerpt­ed from that broad­cast’s descrip­tion: “A col­league of Eddie the Friend­ly Spook [Snow­den], Julian Assange and Glenn Green­wald, Kim Schmitz, aka “Kim Dot­com”] espous­es the same libertarian/free mar­ket ide­ol­o­gy under­ly­ing the “cor­po­ratism” of Ben­i­to Mus­soli­ni. With an exten­sive crim­i­nal record in Ger­many and else­where, “Der Dot­com­man­dant” has elud­ed seri­ous pun­ish­ment for his offens­es, includ­ing exe­cut­ing the largest insid­er trad­ing scheme in Ger­man his­to­ry.

Embraced by the file-shar­ing com­mu­ni­ty and ele­ments of the so-called pro­gres­sive sec­tor, Dot­com actu­al­ly allied him­self with John Banks and his far-right ACT Par­ty in New Zealand. His embrace of the so-called pro­gres­sive sec­tor came lat­er and is viewed as hav­ing dam­aged left-lean­ing par­ties at the polls. Dot­com is enam­ored of Nazi mem­o­ra­bil­ia and owns a rare, author-auto­graphed copy of ‘Mein Kampf.’ . . .”

Pro­gram High­lights Include: dis­sem­i­na­tion of the Seth Rich dis­in­for­ma­tion by Fox News and Rush Lim­baugh, gen­er­at­ed by Wik­iLeaks, Roger Stone and Kim Dot­com; Kim Dot­com’s tweet­ing of an admit­ted­ly pho­ny doc­u­ment about the Seth Rich BS; Dot­com’s refusal to retract his tweet of the pho­ny doc­u­ment; review of the Shad­ow Bro­kers non-hack of the NSA; review of the Shad­ow Bro­kers use of white suprema­cist pro­pa­gan­da; review of the role of Crowd­strike’s Dim­itri Alper­ovitch in the dis­sem­i­na­tion of the “Rus­sia did it” pro­pa­gan­da; review of the role of Ukrain­ian fas­cist Alexan­dra Chalu­pa in the dis­sem­i­na­tion of the “Rus­sia did it” pro­pa­gan­da.

FTR #959 Update on the New Cold War and the Nazification of Ukraine

In a long series of pro­grams and posts over the last four years, we have chron­i­cled the re-insti­tu­tion of the OUN/B World War II-era fas­cists as the foun­da­tion­al ele­ment of the Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment. Of par­tic­u­lar sig­nif­i­cance in that regard is the Naz­i­fi­ca­tion of the Ukrain­ian intel­li­gence ser­vice, the SBU.

Among the recent devel­op­ments in the oper­a­tions of the OUN/B‑related ele­ments in Ukraine is the post­ing of a call for the erad­i­ca­tion of Ukraine’s Jews.

The call for a new Holo­caust in Ukraine was made by Vasi­ly Vovk – a senior offi­cer in the SBU, for­mer head of the SBU’s inves­tiga­tive unit and head of the SBU’s inves­ti­ga­tion into the MH17 probe. (Vovk’s pro­nounce­ment casts fur­ther doubt over the MH17 inves­ti­ga­tion.)

The SBU is also impli­cat­ed in the bomb­ing assas­si­na­tion of jour­nal­ist Pavel Sheremet.

Next, we cov­er the lat­est attempt by Volodomyr Via­tro­vych and Ukraine’s Insti­tute of Nation­al Mem­o­ry to puri­fy Ukraine of any mem­o­ries that might por­tray “nation­al­ist” groups like the UPA (the mil­i­tary wing of the OUN/B) as a bunch of Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tors: Ukraine is inves­ti­gat­ing a 94-year-old Jew­ish WWII hero over the death of a UPA propagandist/Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tor back in 1952 while he was work­ing for the NKVD at the rec­om­men­da­tion of Via­tro­vych as part of a pack­age of new decom­mu­ni­sa­tion laws.

Via­tro­vych heads the insti­tute for Nation­al Mem­o­ry, the Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment agency that is imple­ment­ing the total per­ver­sion of Ukraine’s World War II his­to­ry. The excess­es of his depart­ment are being cre­at­ed under the aegis of “decom­mu­ni­sa­tion.”

“Decom­mu­ni­sa­tion” isn’t just going to cov­er inves­ti­ga­tions of Sovi­ety-era inci­dents. As the fol­low­ing inter­view grim­ly describes, every­one is a poten­tial tar­get in Ukraine. And “decom­mu­ni­sa­tion”, or sim­ply being asso­ci­at­ed with any­thing ‘Russ­ian’ at all, is enough to bring vio­lence or worse.

We then high­light an arti­cle about the anti-Roma pogrom that was just imple­ment­ed by a small vil­lage and appar­ent­ly approved of by the rest of the gov­ern­ment. The arti­cle was writ­ten by a jour­nal­ist who trav­eled to that region and queried the locals about their views of the Roma. Almost every­one he talked to hate the Roma with a pas­sion. It also turns out most of them had lit­tle to no actu­al con­tact with their fel­low Roma cit­i­zens, at least not know­ing­ly since many Roma hide their eth­nic­i­ty due to ram­pant job dis­crim­i­na­tion.

Most locals sim­ply par­rot­ed the anti-Roma lessons they were taught as chil­dren. Anti-Roma Lessons that are even found in Ukrain­ian text­books. It comes as no sur­prise that the Azov Bat­tal­ion is join­ing in on cre­at­ing a cli­mate of fear and intim­i­da­tion.

Next, we note that Ukraine is set to be the world’s third largest food exporter some time in the next decade due to its incred­i­bly pro­duc­tive arable land. This is undoubt­ed­ly a major fac­tor in the push to incor­po­rate Ukraine into the West­ern sphere of influ­ence.